Spicy Crispy Kung Pao Cauliflower

These crispy kung pao cauliflower bites are just that, crispy, spicy, juicy, hot, and super fun. Bake the cauliflower, make the kung pao sauce. Arrange the cauliflower in one layer in a serving plate/bowl. Drizzle the sauce just before serving.

The dish can also be served with rice or other cooked grains. The recipe is for snack kung pao cauliflower bites. Double the sauce to serve over rice, or if you have a good large cauliflower head. The sauce can get hot depending on the chilies you use. Taste before drizzling over the cauliflower. If too hot, make another batch of the sauce without the chilies and mix. For a quick recipe, toss cauliflower in salt, cayenne and oil and bake until done, or cook in a pan with a splash of water until tender, then toss in the sauce. Serve with a jar of cold water. 🙂

Chop up the cauliflower and keep aside. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F / 220ºc. Mix the cornstarch breadcrumbs, and the rest of the ingredients to make a batter. Let the batter sit for 10 seconds to thicken if it isn't thick. The cornstarch continues to thicken the batter, so as soon as it is a good not too watery consistency, start dipping the cauliflower in the batter, tap to drop excess and place on parchment lined baking sheet. If the batter thickens too much while working, add a tsp or more water and mix in and continue.

Bake for 30 minutes or longer until the florets are cooked through. Check with a toothpick/knife

Meanwhile make the sauce. Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the red chilies and peppercorns and cook until the red chilies are fragrant, but not overly brown, or someone starts sneezing. (For more heat, break some of the chilies into half and add to the skillet.)

Add the nuts and mix for a few seconds. Add the ginger, garlic, reduce heat to medium low and continue to cook until the garlic is golden. 4 to 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add in the scallions, and 2 to 3 tbsp finely chopped green peppers or other veggies if using and mix in. Increase heat to medium. Cook for a minute.

Mix the sauce ingredients in a bowl and add to the skillet. Continue to cook until the sauce comes to a boil and thickens slightly. 2 mins. Carefully taste and adjust salt, sweet and spice. If the sauce is not hot enough, break a few of the chilies open or add in red pepper flakes to taste and mix in.

Arrange the baked cauliflower in a shallow bowl in one layer. When ready to serve, Drizzle the sauce over each floret. Serve.

To store, store the baked cauliflower and sauce separately. Heat the sauce, pour over the florets. To serve with rice/cooked grains, double the sauce mix and bring to a boil to thicken, toss in the cauliflower and serve immediately over rice.

Recipe Notes

Its easy for the sauce to go from mild to super hot with the broken chilies. Whole chilies add a smoked mild heat flavor and you can adjust the heat using pepper flakes later. I usually break half the chilies and use hot cayenne or thai and the sauce easily gets to 5 star heat. 🙂

This looks delicious! Kung Pao Veggies is my standard order at my local Chinese takeout place :). I’m not sure I understand the amount for the water in the batter. Is it 1 Tbsp + 1/4 Tbsp, or is it 1/4 of some other measurement plus the 1 Tbsp? If the former, it doesn’t seem like enough water to make a batter. Can you please clarify? Thank you!

This looks delicious! Kung Pao veggies is my standard order at my local Chinese takeout place :). I’m not sure I understand the measurement for the water in the batter. Is it 1/4 Tbsp + 1 Tbsp, or is it 1/4 some other unit of measurement + the 1 Tbsp. If the former it doesn’t seem like enough water to make a batter. Can you please clarify? Thank you!

I just put the cauliflower in the oven, to bake! I used enough water (more than 1/4 c.) to make a paste. Poured the paste over the cauliflower in a large bowl, and mixed well. Spread it out on a parchment paper lined pan…we’ll see how it goes!

Made this dish. Cauliflower are really tasty. Struggled with recipe for batter! Mine looked like dry and crumbly. Had to add a lot of water to make it batter consistency. Right off the bat I’m concerned. Struggled with sauce. By the time I had followed directions and put everything in, I only had about two large spoonfuls of sauce. Sauce also needed quite a bit of fiddling to balance. My suggestion is include more veggies as suggested, like bell pepper and carrot. Then double or even triple the sauce! Worst that could happen is you have a lot of it. Then serve everything on basmati rice as an entree. I’m not giving up but this needs tweaking. I find this a lot in vegan recipes. They can be fiddly and then need tweaking. No such thing as “easy” vegan unless three ingredients or less!

Hi Susan, the recipe was missing 1/4 cup water, it said 1/4 before, so that might explain the water needed in the batter. I am not sure about what happened to the sauce. There is more than 1/2 cup liquid to begin with. maybe the sauce was cooked too long and the liquid evaporated? you can add more water to the sauce if it reduced too much, and bring to a boil and use. Hope you make it again.

One small critique, I do agree about the batter. Although the consistency ended up being ok, the quantities listed didn’t make much batter at all. I even made a double batch of it and it was barely enough to cover the florets one smallish-medium head of cauliflower, and the coating was pretty thin, so it’s not like I was gobbing it on. I’ve got it in the oven though, and I’m sure it’ll still be delicious! I absolutely love your recipes, Richa — the butternut squash burger with sriracha mayo still makes my mouth water, even though I’ve made it over and over 🙂 Thank you so much for everything!

chickpea flour would be too strong a taste and coconut flour will not work as it doesnt make a good batter. Make a batter with wheat fjour and water or a gluten-free blend and water until it is thick and doesnt flow off the cauliflower too quickly. You can also roast just the cauliflower (no batter, just salt + cayenne), or cook it in a pan with some water until done, then toss in the sauce.

This recipe looks awesome !! I have baked cauliflower before , but this looks absolutely wonderful !! I am going to try this for sure . I also wanted to say I love getting these updates with recipes !! You are doing a fabulous service & I so much appreciate . Have a nice day 🙂

This is perfect! I’ve been making things from your cookbook nonstop, and now I’m excited to try some of your other dishes. This will be great for keeping myself busy (and full in a healthy way) during some upcoming football games that I may or may not be interested in but will join in watching in order to keep the peace around here. 🙂

Got a “Yowza!” and then a “Wow!” and then “Two thumbs up!” from my husband. Then he said, “I like everything you make, but this might be my favorite. This and the Massaman Curry.” (Also your recipe.) Thanks!!!

Richa, thanks for another terrific recipe! The batter itself had such a terrific flavor. So glad I left out the chili peppers in the sauce though, because I was a little heavy on the cayenne in the batter. I ate a few pieces and then went back to the kitchen to make artichoke-spinach dip. Shockingly, when I came back the cauliflower was gone!!! What a phenomenal way to make one of my favorite veggies! Thank you very much. I appreciate you and all your hard work. (Is it possible your rating system doesn’t work in Chrome? I’ve had trouble giving 5 stars in the past, too).

Hi Sue, thats awesome! Yes the cayenne adds quite some heat in the batter, you can use less of it and add more chili peppers to the sauce. the chili peppers if not broken, will add a great flavor but not too much heat. If broken, they will add quite some heat too. the rating works for me in chrome, but doesnt work on Safari. i will check with the widget developers. Thanks!

Sooooo good! I’m so happy to have found your site. This is maybe my favorite vegetarian food I’ve ever made! Even my meat-loving hubby is digging it! Will be repeating in double batch tomorrow… perfect for this blizzard we’re having 🙂

I made this 2 nights ago, and my husband and I both loved it. He could not stop thanking me. Last night I asked him to grab some buns on his way home for our dinner, and he forgot the buns but showed up with two more heads of cauliflower. Guess what we’re having for dinner tonight? Your Kung pao lentils are also a favorite. Thanks!

I made this last night and it was amazing. I also cooked up some tofu on the side for protein and drizzled the sauce over that-awesome too. I’m recommend doubling the amount of sauce for future recipes though- it was so tasty, I just wanted more.

Yes its about a 1/3 cup starch. You can use half flour half starch. It makes a crisp coating on the cauliflower. Yes, that is 1/4 cup breadcrumbs and 2 tbsp more breadcrumbs. No, water is an ingredient on a separate line. Each ingredient has its own line. You can also use the flour based batter + breadcrumb coating from this post. Add cayenne to the batter. http://www.veganricha.com/2016/02/crispy-tofu-with-sweet-chili-sauce.html

Hi Richa! This was such a great recipe, thanks so much for posting! It turned out great, and I got a ton of compliments from meat eaters at the party I brought it to. I think the best compliment I got was a guy who was literally scraping the serving spoon off to get the last bits of the sauce!

I do have a question though- for the batter do you mix the dry and the wet ingredients separately and dunk the cauliflower in the wet mixture first and then the dry? I ask because I mixed them all together and I felt the batter mixture wasn’t really sticking well to the cauliflower. Thanks!

Hi Laura, I did not have that problem. If the batter thicken too much, then it might not stick well to the cauliflower. It seems like this batter is not predictable for some who have tried it. i will rework the recipe in the next day or so for an easier batter. For a super crispy coating, use the batter plus breading from the crispy tofu recipe on the blog.

oh no. yes the dish can get hot depending on the cayenne and the chilies. Sometimes the dried red chilies end up being hotter than usual too and will add a load of heat to the dish instead of just a nice smoky low heat profile. You can make another batch of the sauce without the chilies and serve it over cold rice.

Made this tonight and it was absolutely amazing- even better than Chinese restaurant food. Used California red peppers and it was just the right amount of spicy. A little time consuming to make, but totally worth the effort!

Thanks Richa!! Love all your creative cooking. Please do post few of the indian snacks that can be baked in an oven without deep frying like Chakkli, Sev or Ghatiya . I am yet to try your Moong Dal Samosa and Rosemary Crackers.

I made this recipe with a change in the batter part. Just used unbleached flour and not breadcrumbs with vegetable broth and used the rest of the ingredients as listed absolutely delicious. One of my favorite vegan meals.

Hi! I tried this twice and the first time, the batter did not cling to the cauliflower in cooking. I ended up with a glop of batter stuck to the side of the cauliflower that touched the pan. The second time, I just roasted the cauliflower with a sprinkle of olive oil and lots of black pepper. Tossed it in with the sauce and some edamame and red peppers … Delicious!

I have made this for so many times now. My whole family loves it! It’s just perfect. All the spiciness and the sweet-and-sourness. I usually serve it with mashed potatoes or basmati rice. Thank you, Richa!! 🙂

My husband and I just made this tonight for the first time and it was awesome!! We needed to add extra water to the batter to make it the right consistency and instead of dipping each piece, we just threw all the florets into the batter and tossed them until they were coated, then poured them onto the parchment lined baking sheet – they came out wonderfully delicious!!! We tripled the sauce recipe (we love lots of sauce) and served it over basmati rice. It was the perfect balance of flavors and heat. We will definitely be making this recipe often. Thank you, Richa!

Hi ! This recipe looks awesome, and I am so excited to try it! I was wondering if you could freeze these cauliflower florets and sauce separately for a easy and quick meal to use later, and how long could I freeze them for? Do you think that would work?

Easy to follow and done without any tweaking! Taste great. I used fresh fresno jalapeños and I added green bells and had steamed long beans and millet on the side. With extra Chinese chilli powder it was burning hot so a lot of flax milk was imbibed!

This recipe was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. My boyfriend and I agreed it was maybe the best thing we had ever made. However, I do want to add that we absolutely had to double the batter and more than double the amount of water called for (1.25 cups was not enough to make the batter remotely liquid-y). Maybe our cauliflower head was large but it looked normal to me and doubling the batter plus adding extra water was perfect to cover all the florets. We had it last night with homemade edamame + mustard greens dumplings and I’m having it today reheated with rice and edamame. It’s so good!!! And so spicy. Other than the proportions issue, this was a 5 star recipe!! Will def make again.

I used to eat meat. I used to eat sea creatures. Sushi used to be my favorite “food.” Been vegan for 4 years now and THIS is one of my FAVORITE recipes…definitely the best Kung Pao anything I’ve ever had. I’ve shared it with friends who eat meat and they agree! Share this recipe and bookmark it!

Can I make a quicker version of the KP sauce using sriracha and omitting the chili peppers and scallions? Also, I have seen some recipes for this sauce using sesame oil (a taste I like)? Would this work?

This was really delicious. I had a large cauliflower and tripled the recipe. It was perfect! Everyone loved it. Will make this again for sure. This was our main dish that I served with rice and steamed broccoli. Looking forward to the leftovers tomorrow!

My husband and I made this last night and it was delicious! We did cut open several of the peppers (and even ate a few) so it was rather spicy, but oh so good! Thank you so much for the recipe, we will be making it again!

Like 2 other people in here I could not understand the recipe 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp corn starch? 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp bread crumbs? 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp water? What does it mean? I saw your answers but left me just as clueless Can you be more specific or if possible just put the total amount of the ingredients without the + and adding more

Just tried this for dinner as my husband looks for crunchy stuff when we eat out. I subbed flour for the breadcrumbs and needed a little extra water. Delicious. Probably loses crunch when stored, but he seems to be downing the extra cauliflower as he does dishes. I’ve asked for everyday vegan for my birthday, but am recommending it on blogs even before I get it. Is this recipe in the book?

I had saved this recipe some time ago and finally pulled it out and made it for supper. It is very tasty and I really enjoyed it immensely! The crunch and spice were great with that nice umami taste! I doubled the sauce since I served it with rice, but not much was to be had. However, it was more than enough to coat the cauliflower and if there were more sauce it would be too overpowering. It was a hit with my two grandsons, as well. They are not big on vegetables and trying yet another new dish was off-putting for them, but they did agree they liked it! 😉 Another recipe I will put on my “tried and true” list to make again!

This might be my husband’s favorite recipe. Dipping the florets was a pain, though. Instead, I make the batter in a large bowl and just dump the raw cauliflower in it and stir it until each piece is coated. Works great and is so much faster and easier!

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